Ochamecon

The Ochamecon is a university in southern Tegn, notable for its focus on æalogy. The Ochamecon is riddled with portals to various different worlds and planes, some of them even leading to other cosmoi entirely, making the university a compit. The portals have been gradually added to over many years, and not all of them are clearly labeled; every year a few students stumble accidentally through an unexpected portal or two.

History

The Ochamecon was founded twelve hundred and eighty years ago by a coalition of mages, on property acquired from a wealthy alchemist named Ochamech. The first rector of the university was a woman named Albazar Xend, who set many policies that still continue. During the Blue Rebellion, Ochamecon served as a fortress for the resistance; aside from that, it has been in continuous operation since its founding.

Although its faculty were always interested in æalogy, it didn't develop an unusual number of portals until almost four hundred years after its founding, when an experiment involving a betath went awry, producing a number of portals scattered all over the shee. The results have never been duplicated or understood (not for want of trying), but the then-rector, Isi Utsu, decided to make a virtue of necessity and build constructively on this error. This isn't to say that he or anyone at his direction intentionally created new portals, but Utsu made it known that the practice of any experimental magics that might result in the creation of new portals would be welcome at the school. It's also entirely possible that whatever enchantment led to the first portals after the betath incident is still continuously generating new portals—certainly the precise origin of many of the school's portals remains unknown, and a lot of portals have been discovered possibly many years after their genesis.

Surroundings

The school and its outbuildings are the only structures on the shee on which they are located, and sufficiently identified with the shee that it has no name other than the Ochamecon grounds. The shee is very roughly circular, with the most prominent geographical features being a forest, the Colwood, that takes up the southern sixth or so of the shee, and the Mere, a large lake in the northern part of the shee. A few smaller shees near the main shee are also considered part of the grounds.

Aside from the aforementioned features, the grounds are mostly covered by grass, with numerous trees and plots of flowers. Most of the wildlife is in the form of insects and small, harmless animals such as squirrels, but some more exotic life forms now inhabit the shee that have come through portals and since found a foothold there.

Layout

Most of the university proper is concentrated near the middle of the island. At the center of the shee is the administrative building, situated on its own shee that occupies a hole in the middle of the main shee; this location gives the building its name, Island Hall. Most of the academic buildings are near Island Hall, north of the Colwood and south of the Mere. Onater Hall, the main æalogy building, is on the southeast shore of the Mere; the university's main library, the Otoxcan, is on the southwest shore.

Buildings lying farther from the center include most of the residence halls, many of which are clustered at the edge of the Colwood. The Kadera Arena, on a separate shee at the northeast edge of the grounds, and connected to the rest of the grounds by two sturdy bridges, houses a number of athletic events. Particularly popular at the Ochamecon are kake battles, with competitors bringing kakes from all over Tegn.

Portals

The Ochamecon's most famous feature, its portals, permeate the grounds. Most of the portals do have the apperance of ordinary doors, and are mostly located within the academic buildings. Onater Hall, unsurprisingly, is particularly dense with portals. No building on the campus seems to be completely without them, however, the residence halls included. All in all, there are estimated to be at least two thousand portals in the Ochamecon, leading to at least seventy different planes within Nanben, forty-five other eders within Sent, and three different cosmoi. (These numbers may be very low; there are many cases of portals which are strongly suspected but have not been proven to lead to entirely different planes from other portals.) Naturally, most of the known portals have had locks installed, and are generally kept firmly shut up, but contraband keys are widely circulated among the student population.

A few of the portals—perhaps one or two percent of the total—do not take the form of doors at all, but exist within other sorts of apertures, or in the open air without any framework at all. These portals are usually cordoned off and their surroundings made off limits to all but researchers, but some mischievous students find their ways through them anyway... and occasionally new such portals are discovered.

Academics

The Ochamecon's academic program is deep and rigorous; students are only admitted at the recommendation of respected individuals or after proving their talent through specially administered examinations, and even then less than a third of the students who begin the program don't make it through to their final degree. So well regarded is the university, however, that even those who have spent only a single year or so at the university are respected for it, and have a significantly higher average income than those without such a background.

Though most renowned for its æalogical achievements, the Ochamecon by no means confines its academic development to that particular discipline. A full range of different studies and departments exist in the university, covering all the usual arts and sciences. Aside from æalogy, among the subjects the Ochamecon is particularly known for are theater, sculpture, celemology, etory, and linguistics.

Faculty

The Ochamecon's senior faculty members are highly respected throughout Tegn and to some degree beyond it. The rector, Cabon Jaer, was before his ascent to that position a well known planar explorer, and is still considered a top authority on matters regarding certain planes. The head of the æalogy department, Focol Jhormene, is of course another renowned scholar. Other highly respected æalogists in the faculty include Arë Coxin, Sanandre Tealin, and K'ban Khulu.

Outside of the æalogy department, some of the Ochamecon's best-known and most lauded faculty members include chemist Jadory Lessin, theater instructor and playwright Vivagi Aorene, aoedeologist Ranokon Tsuma, and phasmologist Estor Milbade.

Notable alumni

In its more than a millennium of operation, the Ochamecon has produced scholars who have gone on to distinguish themselves in many different fields. Just a small sampling of the Ochamecon's notable alumni could include sculptor Ioni Thast; æalogists Mora Malini and Enik Crace; writer and poet Hadrai Qamir; and Haua Iwaga, king of Walaia.